Robert said, in a different kind of voice, a peculiarly recitative voice as if he were repeating a text which he had learned by rote, ‘You probably understand that I’m a very busy man.’
‘Yes, of course, but –’
‘I have little time for any of the more frivolous pleasures of life, like dancing or theatre or music. My father took me into the bank when I was young, and because I had an especial talent for banking work, he came to rely upon me more and more. Today, although my father doesn’t realise it, the running of the bank is almost entirely dependent upon me. My father is not much more these days than a figurhead, whose overblown sense of dignity and superlative ill-temper I can occasionally draw upon to help me in my work, but who achieves very little during his day in the office but bother his staff with bluster and old-fashioned ideas.’
Prudence said, ‘Your father hasn’t made any of his family very happy, has he? Effie was saying that –’
Robert turned around, and the expression on his face was concentrated enough to silence her. He said. I’m not particular about happiness just now. Happiness is a commodity that only fools, women, and dyvors are interested in. A dyvor is what we call a bankrupt, or a near-bankrupt. What I’m trying to say to you is that I’m thirty years old now, and it’s time I was married – both for the sake of having a hostess who can entertain my business acquaintances, and for continuing the Watson line.’
Now, Prudence was completely silent. She could do nothing but look at him, her brown hair astray, her shawl pressed to her breast, her mouth slightly parted, with William Albert kicking on her lap. On the wall behind the bed was a dark engraving of John Knox, the Protestant reformer, from the frontispiece of his book The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
Robert drew the small yellow-painted bentwood chair from under the dressing-table, and sat down on it. He said, seriously, ‘I will never have the time to woo a lady. I doubt, to be quite truthful, if I will ever have the necessary flair for it. But here you are, without means, and with a boy who is by chance a full-blooded Watson, of my own family; so what more sensible combination could there be? Than you, with this wean; and me. Husband and wife, and ready-made heir.’
Prudence said, in a voice that was not much more than a whisper. ‘What will your brother say? Dougal? Won’t he try to claim then that the child is his?’
‘Dougal couldn’t give a preen. Besides, he’s in America, and likely to stay there.’
‘You really want to marry me?’
‘That’s what I’m asking. I’m not obliging you.’
‘But you don’t know me. You don’t know me at all.’
‘I know that you’re well-looking, and that you’ve borne a healthy handsome boy, and that you speak like a lady, even if you have no wealth. What more should I know?’
‘But you don’t love me,’ insisted Prudence. ‘And I don’t love you.’
Robert raised his chin. His face was smooth and plump and somehow reminded Prudence of a large rice pudding, browned in the oven. He said, ‘Is there any need to speak of love?’
Prudence sat in her chair for a very long time, not speaking, silent and tired. She knew that Robert was rich, and that if she said yes to his proposal, she would never have to want for anything again, never have to sit in a 3rd-class railway carriage all the way to Scotland in a dark snowstorm, with a wet-diapered baby on her knee, its urine soaking into the side of her skirts. Never have to work, or worry, or pray. The rich, she knew, find God unnecessary. Never have to shop, or clean shoes, or iron a blouse. Never have to think, even.
Her self-consciousness was such that she might have refused Robert altogether. Just because she was a woman, and just because she had been victimised by that ancient and familiar set of discriminatory circumstances (lover makes woman pregnant, then flees, leaving baby in woman’s eternal care), that didn’t mean that she had to allow herself to be trapped by the first ugly and deficient saviour who came along. And, God, she thought, aren’t all saviours ugly and deficient! Only the bastards are handsome and desirable and strong.
But there was William Albert to think of. Without money, William Albert could only be raised as an illegitimate waif. He would be lucky if he ever owned a pair of shoes. If he ever managed to learn to read and write, he might become a clerk. He would never know the taste of champagne; he would never know what it was like to dress in silk. He would probably never travel further in the whole of his life than the nearest seaside.
Prudence looked down at William Albert, and the baby clutched her finger in his own tiny dimpled hand. Prudence thought: I’ve been trapped. I might as well admit it, and do the best I can, for myself, and for William Albert.
Robert said, ‘You can think about it. I’ll give you time. I never force anybody to make a crucial decision in a hurry.’
Prudence lowered her head. She felt as if the whole room were turning under her feet. She was suddenly conscious of being in Scotland, in the snowy north, on a world that was rotating on its axis, through an empty and infinite night. She had been prepared for all kinds of shattering eventualities when she came to Scotland; for a fierce argument with Dougal, for a melodramatic reunion of tears and laughter. But she hadn’t thought for one moment that she might be faced with the decision she was faced with now.
William Albert started to whoop, and cry. She said, ‘Shush, William Albert,’ but he didn’t stop. He was hungry for the rest of his supper.
Prudence swallowed. Then, slowly, boldly, she lowered the baby shawl from her bare breast, and lifted up William Albert in her arms so that he could suckle from it. Robert watched her plumply and impassively, breathing steadily through his mouth; and took in, with eyes almost as cold as his father’s, the sight of the wide brown nipple from which a glistening drop of milk had already sprung.
At last, though, he stood up, and pushed the yellow chair back under the dressing-table. ‘I’ll make the necessary arrangements,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll ask Mrs McNab to move you down to the Cerulean Room.’
Prudence didn’t look up. But she said, quietly, ‘You’ll be kind to me, won’t you?’
There was no reply. She said, ‘Robert?’, speaking his name for the first time. But he was gone. The door was a half-inch ajar, and from downstairs she could hear Effie singing I Hae Been At Crookieden. The church bells were ringing again through the night. William Albert noisily sucked. It was Christmas, in Charlotte Square.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The morning after Twelfth Night, Effie was sitting in the morning-room, reading a slim marble-bound copy of My Life by Thomas Bewick, which Celia Calder-Haig had given her for Christmas, when her mother came in, bustling and distressed, and said, ‘Effie? Oh, Effie, would you ring for Mrs McNab, please?’
‘Mother, what’s wrong?’ asked Effie. She laid down her book on the small table beside her, and half-rose in her chair. ‘Mother, you look awful!’
Fiona Watson went to the window, her hand pressed to her forehead. In the cold bright winter sunlight, she looked even paler than ever, and her hair was untidy and frayed. She said, ‘I just need a cup of tea to settle me, that’s all. Will you ring, please?’
Effie went to the small morning-room fireplace and pushed the button beside it. Then she came over to her mother, and lightly laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Mother, you’re shaking.’
Fiona Watson took a shallow, quivering breath. ‘I’ve heard from Jamie McFarlane,’ she said. ‘Here, you’d better read it for yourself. Then perhaps you’ll know what calumny your father is capable of.’ She produced a folded letter from the pocket of her brown skirt. ‘Here, read it.’
Effie opened the letter slowly, keeping her eyes on her mother. A bright tear was already sliding down her mother’s cheek, although she didn’t utter a sound. She was too well brought up to let the servants hear her sobbing.
The letter read, ‘My darling F., I have risked writing to you because it is possible that I may never be able to see you ag
ain. I cannot tell you how grieved I am; but it is most important that you believe me, for in the following weeks and months you may hear terrible things about me, terrible accusations, none of which are true.
‘I have been accused by the police on evidence supplied by a nameless informer of molesting three young girls and a boy at a tenement house in Upper Bow. They allege that I performed unnatural acts with these children and they say that the children themselves will be brought against me as witnesses. I have already been dismissed from my charity work, and I have lost my lodgings. I have been released on £100 bail, which was raised by friends, but I am afraid that I will be convicted when they bring me to trial, and imprisoned.
‘Believe me, my dearest, these charges are completely without substance. I fear that they may have been tricked up by T. Is this possible? I hate to suspect him of something which he may not have done, but after Gavin McFee let the cat out of the bag on Christmas Day, may this not have been his way of exercising his wrath against me?
‘I will write again as soon as I have news. I am safe with my sister at the moment. Please do not worry too desperately on my account. I love you enduringly. You are my moon and my stars, and the sun from which shines the only light which has ever illuminated my life. J.’
Effie herself had tears in her eyes as she lowered the letter. She said, sadly, ‘Oh, mother. I’m so sorry for you.’
‘You have no need to be sorry for me, Effie. It’s Jamie McFarlane for whom you should save your sorrow. Oh God, poor Jamie! If I hadn’t have loved him, if I hadn’t been so selfish as to break my marriage vows, and snare him in, he would have been safe now, and happy with someone else. Do you know how guilty I feel? He’s going to go to prison, on the worst of all possible charges, and all because of me.’
‘Mother, it wasn’t your fault.’
‘Of course it was my fault! I am old enough and wise enough to take the responsibility for my own life, and for those I love. Your father is nothing more than a witless blundering brute, who crushes and lashes and beats blindly out at anything and everything that irritates him. He’s inherited the cruelty of his own father before him, but unlike his own father, he’s wealthy and powerful enough to inflict that cruelty on anybody he chooses. I knew what he was like; and I knew what he would do to Jamie if he ever found out about our liaison. I destroyed Jamie just as surely by what I did as he was destroyed by anything that your father has done.’
‘You’ve no proof that it was father,’ said Effie, a little desperately.
‘Who else could it be?’ replied Fiona Watson, and her voice was as bitter as horse-nettle. ‘You know that Jamie’s no child-molester. He has one or two enemies on the Corporation, but there’s nobody else who would seek to tear his whole life to pieces, like this.’
Effie felt as if everything around her, the morning-room, the fireplace, the view out of the window of the backs of the houses in Queen Street, had been suddenly revealed as nothing more than a theatrical stage-set; and that she and her mother were reciting the words from some peculiar play. She said, ‘What can you do?’
‘Do? There’s nothing I can do.’
‘Can’t you talk to father?’
‘Your father is beyond being talked to.’
‘But surely –’
Fiona Watson pulled open the buttons of her shirtwaist blouse, tugged up the slip which she wore underneath, and bared her ribs and her stomach. They were smothered in bruises, some of them purple and fresh, others red and yellow, and fading. They looked like a collection of plums, in different stages of ripening.
Effie reached out with a shaking hand and touched her mother’s ribs with her fingertips, infinitely gently. ‘Father did this?’ she whispered, in disbelief.
‘It’s time you knew,’ said Fiona Watson, starkly.
‘You mean, this isn’t the first time?’
‘No. And probably not the last. Do you remember that time I had to go the clinic in Fife, because of an ingrowing toenail? Well, it was nothing to do with a toenail at all. Your father had cracked four of my ribs, and chipped my collar-bone. He has a way about him, you see. He knows how to hurt a lady without anybody finding out about it.’
‘But why?’
Fiona Watson tucked away her slip, and buttoned up her blouse. Effie helped her with the cameo clasp at her neck. When she had fastened it, she held her mother very close, so close that she could feel her heart beating through her poor bruised ribs.
Mrs McNab came in. ‘You rang for me, ma’am?’
Fiona Watson said, ‘Yes, Mrs McNab. I would love some tea with lemon, please. The Keemun.’
Mrs NcNab could see that something was wrong, by the way that Fiona and Effie were standing so close together, and by the whiteness of Fiona’s face. She said, ‘You’re not sickening for something, ma’am?’
‘No, Mrs McNab, I’m quite all right. Just a little tired, after the Christmas season.’
Mrs McNab hesitated, then said, ‘Very well, ma’am. I’ll bring the tea. But if you don’t mind my saying so, you look as if bed is the best place for you.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Effie went up to her room that evening and spent a whole hour in frantic and contradictory thought. It was horrifying to her that her father beat her mother: it almost made her sick to think about it. She was also confused and frightened about what he had done to Jamie McFarlane. But, at the same time, he was her father, and her mother had betrayed him, and however sympathetic she felt towards her mother, she could still understand how violently jealous and enraged her father must feel. Effie, being the only girl, had a girlish love for her father which neither Robert nor Dougal could understand; just as she bore a girlish love for both of them, her brothers, no matter how crass they were, or how badly they behaved, or what mistakes they made. She took care with people, always; although not always out of selfless and charitable devotion. Often, she took care with people simply because she knew that they might be helpful to her later – a family quality which Robert had developed into a highly elaborate art form. She could listen, she was attentive, but she was always very positive in everything she did. She was loving and giving, too, which was extraordinary in many ways, considering the hostility and lovelessness of her family background; but which was understandable, too, because her father and mother in their different manners had both brought her up to feel that the wealthy are responsible, as well as privileged, and that they must serve the community in which they live, rather than feed off it.
Yet, Effie was beginning to wonder what was the point of her moral education, what was the point of all her grooming, when all she seemed to get in return was loneliness, and isolation, and even the feeling of being an outsider in her own family. Her father and her brother were involved in the bank; her mother ran the household; each of them struggled and argued and played out their parts. Whereas she herself felt as if Robert had only invited her to work with him at the bank to keep her occupied until she found a suitable man to marry, and as if her mother only confided in her about Jamie McFarlane because she couldn’t possibly confide in anybody else.
Thomas Watson stared at her these days as if he were amazed that she was still at home, and not wedded; or as if he were already sure that she would always remain a spinster, and that she would be taking care of him in his old age, soothing his forehead right up until the very last day of his life.
Still, uncertain of her father as she was, she still loved both her parents enough to go up to his study later that evening and knock at his door. She had not settled in her mind what she wanted to say, but she didn’t want to wait any longer. The atmosphere in the house was as poisonous and as volatile as if somebody had left a gas-mantle turned on for a week, without lighting it.
Thomas Watson was sitting at his desk, his reading-spectacles on his forehead, running through columns and columns of interest figures. When Effie came into the room and quietly closed the door behind her, he said, ‘Effie? And what do you want?’
Ef
fie crossed the room and stood behind him, resting her hands on his shoulders. He put down his pencil, and sat up straighter, and then lifted one of his own hands and laid it on top of hers.
‘Is it Prudence you’ve come to talk about?’ he asked her. ‘Is it Robert’s notion of marrying her?’
‘No, father.’
‘Well, my girlie, that’s just as well. I don’t know what more I can say about that, except what I’ve said already. It’s a tentless idea. He doesn’t even know if that child is a Watson or a What-do-you-call-him. I’ve singled that brother of yours out for better than that. Look at me, married to a Nugent-Dunbar! No ill against your mother, but the Nugent-Dunbars were never known for their strong blood; nor, it may seem, for their strong intelligence. No,’ he said, turning around in his seat, ‘for your brother Robert I’ve got Miss Elizabeth Culross-Houper in mind, daughter of Sir Duncan Culross-Houper, of Kirkcaldy. And appropriate, too. Do you know that Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy? He who said that we were a nation of shopkeepers.’
‘He actually said that we were a nation governed by shopkeepers,’ said Effie.
Thomas Watson frowned. ‘Well, never mind. I never did pay too much attention to education in a girl. I’d rather you spent more time with your mother.’
‘That’s what ‘I’ve come to talk about.’
‘Yes?’
Effie was nervous now, and breathless. She said, ‘I’ve heard about Jamie McFarlane, about the charges brought against him.’
Thomas Watson’s agate-coloured eyes fixed Effie for a moment, and then looked away. ‘What do you know? And how?’
‘It doesn’t matter how.’
‘Through your mother, I suppose.’
‘I said, it doesn’t matter how. I have – met him. Mother did some charity work with him, in the Lands. That was all that happened. They were seen together, and I suppose that some of the coofs who wished them no good spread the story about that they were more than friends.’
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